We have a reason to use information which is available about such genes in our reproductive decision-making; (3) couples should selec.

There are no egalitarians in a pandemic. The scale of the challenge for health systems and public policy means that there is an ineluctable need to prioritize the needs of the many. It is impossible to treat all citizens equally, and a failure to carefully consider the consequences of actions could lead to massive preventable loss of life. In a pandemic there is a strong ethical need to consider how to do most good overall. Utilitarianism is an influential moral theory (...) that states that the right action is the action that is expected to produce the greatest good. It offers clear operationalizable principles. In this paper we provide a summary of how utilitarianism could inform two challenging questions that have been important in the early phase of the pandemic: (a) Triage: which patients should receive access to a ventilator if there is overwhelming demand outstripping supply? (b) Lockdown: how should countries decide when to implement stringent social restrictions, balancing preventing deaths from COVID‐19 with causing deaths and reductions in well‐being from other causes? Our aim is not to argue that utilitarianism is the only relevant ethical theory, or in favour of a purely utilitarian approach. However, clearly considering which options will do the most good overall will help societies identify and consider the necessary cost of other values. Societies may choose either to embrace or not to embrace the utilitarian course, but with a clear understanding of the values involved and the price they are willing to pay. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle all living systems aim to minimise free energy in their sensory exchanges with the environment. Processes of free energy minimisation are thus ubiquitous in the biological world. Indeed it has been argued that even plants engage in free energy minimisation. Not all living things however feel alive. How then did the feeling of being alive get started? In line with the arguments of the phenomenologists, I will claim that every feeling must be felt by (...) someone. It must have mineness built into it if it is to feel a particular way. The question I take up in this paper asks how mineness might have arisen out of processes of free energy minimisation, given that many systems that keep themselves alive lack mineness. The hypothesis I develop in this paper is that the life of an organism can be seen as an inferential process. Every living system embodies a probability distribution conditioned on a model of the sensory, physiological, and morphological states that are highly probably given the life it leads and the niche it inhabits. I argue for an ecological and enactive interpretation of free energy. I show how once the life of an organism reaches a certain level of complexity mineness emerges as an intrinsic part of the process of life itself. (shrink)

In this paper we make a proposal for reforming biomedical research that is aimed to align re-search more closely with the so-called fair-share principle according to which the proportions of global resources as-signed to different diseases should agree with the ratios of human suffering associated with those diseases.

ABSTRACTTaking some controversial claims philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book Against Democracy as a starting point, this paper argues in favour of two theses: There is No Such Thing as Superior Political Judgement; There Is No Such Thing as Uncontroversial Social Scientific Knowledge. I conclude that social science experts need to be kept in check, not given more power.

I contend that mathematical domains are freestanding institutional entities that, at least typically, are introduced to serve representational functions. In this paper, I outline an account of institutional reality and a supporting metaontological perspective that clarify the content of this thesis. I also argue that a philosophy of mathematics that has this thesis as its central tenet can account for the objectivity, necessity, and atemporality of mathematics.

It may soon be possible to generate human organs inside of human-pig chimeras via a process called interspecies blastocyst complementation. This paper discusses what arguably the central ethical concern is raised by this potential source of transplantable organs: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs risks perpetrating a serious moral wrong because the moral status of human-pig chimeras is uncertain, and potentially significant. Those who raise this concern usually take it to be unique to the creation of chimeric animals with (...) ‘humanised’ brains. In this paper, we show how that the same style of argument can be used to critique current uses of non-chimeric pigs in agriculture. This reveals an important tension between two common moral views: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs is ethically concerning, and that farming non-chimeric pigs for food or research is ethically benign. At least one of these views stands in need of revision. (shrink)

Is the brain the biological substrate of consciousness? Most naturalistic philosophers of mind have supposed that the answer must obviously be «yes » to this question. However, a growing number of philosophers working in 4e (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognitive science have begun to challenge this assumption, arguing instead that consciousness supervenes on the whole embodied animal in dynamic interaction with the environment. We call views that share this claim dynamic sensorimotor theories of consciousness (DSM). Clark (2009) a founder and (...) leading proponent of the hypothesis of the extended mind, demurs, arguing that as matter of fact the biology of consciousness doesn’t allow for a brain, body and world boundary crossing architecture. We begin by looking at one of the arguments for DSM, the variable neural correlates argument. We then outline two criticisms that Clark has made of this argument and endorse his criticisms. However we finish up by using the case of sensory substitution to argue that something of this argument for DSM nevertheless survives. We suggest that Clark ought to concede sensory substitution as a case in which the conscious mind extends. (shrink)

Julian Dodd offers an original approach to the controversial concept of authenticity in musical performance. He argues that the fundamental norm is not historical authenticity but interpretive authenticity: being faithful to the work by evincing a profound, far-reaching, or sophisticated understanding of it.

ABSTRACTTo whom is a duty owed? Contractualism answers with an interest theory of direction. As such, it faces three challenges. The Conceptual Challenge requires acknowledgment that a duty is conceptually distinct from an interest. The Extensional Challenge requires an account of cases in which one who is owed a duty does not take an interest in the duty, or does not take as much of an interest as someone who is not owed the duty. The Positivist Challenge requires explanation of (...) the great flexibility of law and other social practices in positing duties that do not reflect the landscape of moral interests. Contractualism can be shown to meet these challenges once we acknowledge the centrality of the idea of a generic interest. Focusing on generic interests also illuminates the distinctive form of respect involved in directedness. (shrink)

Public health policies often require individuals to make personal sacrifices for the sake of protecting other individuals or the community at large. Such requirements can be more or less demanding for individuals. This paper examines the implications of demandingness for public health ethics and policy. It focuses on three possible public health policies that pose requirements that are differently demanding: vaccination policies, policy to contain antimicrobial resistance, and quarantine and isolation policies. Assuming the validity of the ‘demandingness objection’ in ethics, (...) we argue that states should try to pose requirements that individuals would have an independent moral obligation to fulfil, and therefore that are not too demanding. In such cases, coercive measures are ethically justified, especially if the interventions also entail some benefits to the individuals; this is, for example, the case of vaccination policies. When public health policies need to require individuals to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation, states have an obligation to either provide incentives to give individuals non-moral reasons to fulfil a certain requirement – as in the case of policies that limit antibiotic prescriptions – or to compensate individuals for being forced to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation – as in the case of quarantine and isolation policies. (shrink)

The recent judgement in the case of Re:M in which the Court held that it would be unlawful to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from a woman in a minimally conscious state raises a number of ethical issues of wide application. Central to these is the extent to which precedent autonomous decisions should be respected in the absence of a legally binding advance decision. Well-being interests can survive the loss of many of the psychological faculties that support personhood. A decision (...) to respect precedent autonomy can contradict the well-being interests of the individual after capacity is lost. These decisions raise difficult questions about personal identity and about the threshold of evidence that is required of an earlier decision in order for it to be respected. (shrink)

Genomic research can reveal ‘unsolicited’ or ‘incidental’ findings that are of potential health or reproductive significance to participants. It is widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to return certain kinds of unsolicited findings to research participants. It is less widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation to actively look for health-related findings. This paper examines whether there is a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt (...) for genomic secondary findings. We begin by showing how the duty to disclose individual research findings can be grounded in the duty of easy rescue. Next, we describe a parallel moral duty, also grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt for such information. We then consider six possible objections to our argument, each of which we find unsuccessful. Some of these objections provide reason to limit the scope of the duty to look for secondary findings, but none provide reason to reject this duty outright. We argue that under a certain range of circumstances, researchers are morally required to hunt for these kinds of secondary findings. Although these circumstances may not currently obtain, genomic researchers will likely acquire an obligation to hunt for secondary findings as the field of genomics continues to evolve. (shrink)

Does a coherentist version of rationality issue requirements on states? Or does it issue requirements on processes? This paper evalu- ates the possibility of process-requirements. It argues that there are two possible definitions of state- and process-requirements: a satisfaction- based definition and a content-based definition. I demonstrate that the satisfaction-based definition is inappropriate. It does not allow us to uphold a clear-cut distinction between state- and process-requirements. We should therefore use a content-based definition of state- and pro- cess-requirements. However, a (...) content-based definition entails that ra- tionality does not issue process-requirements. Content-based process- requirements violate the principle that ‘rationality requires’ implies ‘can satisfy’. The conclusion of this paper therefore amounts to a radical re- jection of process-requirements of rationality. (shrink)

Our emotional lives are full of temporal asymmetries. Salient among these is that we tend to feel differently about painful or unpleasant events depending on their temporal location: we feel anxiety or trepidation about painful events we anticipate in the future, and relief when they are over. One question, then, is whether temporally asymmetric emotions such as relief have any ramifications for the metaphysics of time. On what has become the standard way of finessing this question, the asymmetry of relief (...) is an instance of the phenomenon of future-bias, a tendency to prefer painful events to be located in the past than in the future. The main question then posed is whether this pattern of preferences can be justified in the light of different metaphysical theories of time. In this paper I argue that this whole dialectic is misconceived. While many people may have future-biased preferences and these are a legitimate object of psychological study, this should be distinguished from the more basic phenomenon of relief that an unpleasant experience is over. Acknowledging the distinctness of these phenomena has two main consequences. First, if relief is not a manifestation of a time-biased preference, it is unclear what it would be for it to be justified or unjustified. This, in turn, should lead us to reassess how the psychology of relief bears on our metaphysical commitments. As I shall suggest, the real significance of the temporally asymmetric emotions for the metaphysics of time is that they manifest, and so reflection on them serves to draw our attention to, a structural feature of our awareness of the passage of time that resists re-articulation in other terms. (shrink)

In intensive care, disputes sometimes arise when patients or surrogates strongly desire treatment, yet health professionals regard it as potentially inappropriate. While professional guidelines confirm that physicians are not always obliged to provide requested treatment, determining when treatment would be inappropriate is extremely challenging. One potential reason for refusing to provide a desired and potentially beneficial treatment is because (within the setting of limited resources) this would harm other patients. Elsewhere in public health systems, cost effectiveness analysis is sometimes used (...) to decide between different priorities for funding. In this paper, we explore whether cost-effectiveness could be used to determine the appropriateness of providing intensive care. We explore a set of treatment thresholds: the probability threshold (a minimum probability of survival for providing treatment), the cost threshold (a maximum cost of treatment), the duration threshold (the maximum duration of intensive care), and the quality threshold (a minimum quality of life). One common objection to cost-effectiveness analysis is that it might lead to rationing of life-saving treatment. The analysis in this paper might be used to inform debate about the implications of applying cost-effectiveness thresholds to clinical decisions around potentially inappropriate treatment. (shrink)

Discrimination is typically understood to be a comparative phenomenon: S is discriminated against on the basis of trait T if she would not have been treated in the same way if she did not possess T. But the comparative test for discrimination may hide from view some important cases: associational discrimination and stereotype policing. These cases show more clearly what is true of discrimination in general: that it involves a vicarious wrong, that is, an action which wrongs someone other than (...) the primary object of disregard. This suggests why philosophers disagree whether discrimination is wrong because it causes harm or because it expresses disrespect. Paradigmatic cases of discrimination involve both harm and disrespect, but direct the harm and the disrespect towards different targets by treating the harmed individual as a mere representative of the targeted group. Discrimination is dehumanizing, and morally distinctive, precisely because of this fact. (shrink)

The issue of COVID-19 vaccine allocation is still highly controversial on the international as well as on the national level, and policy-makers worldwide struggle in striking a fair balance between different ethical principles of vaccine allocation, in particular maximum benefit, reciprocity, social justice and equal respect. Any political decision that implements these principles comes at a cost in terms of loss of lives and of loss of life years that could potentially have been prevented by a different vaccination strategy. This (...) article illustrates these trade-offs using quantitative analysis and shows how this approach can contribute to providing a rational and transparent grounding of political decisions on COVID-19 vaccine allocation. (shrink)

The most obvious thing about the universe in which we find ourselves is its structure. Before the scientific revolution, the instinctive reaction of thinkers to the existence of perceived structure was to find a direct reason for that structure. This is reflected above all in the Pythagorean notion of the well-ordered cosmos: the cosmos has the structure it does because that is the best structure it could have. In fact, that is what the word cosmos really means—primarily order, but also (...) decoration, embellishment, or dress. Kepler and Galileo were no less entranced by the beauty of the world than was Pythagoras, and they formulated their ideas in the overall conceptual framework of the well-ordered cosmos. However, both studied the world so intently that they actually identified aspects of motion that fairly soon led to the complete overthrow of such a notion of cosmos. The laws of the new physics were found to determine not the actual structure of the universe, but the way in which structure changes from instant to instant. Ultimately, no explanation is provided for the currently observed structure; it is simply attributed to an initial structure that was never fashioned by the laws of nature but merely continually refashioned thereafter. The initial and boundary conditions for our universe lie outside the purview of science. But all of the structure we observe around us must ultimately be traced back to those mysterious initial and boundary conditions. (shrink)

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students’ willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. (...) Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism– than a monetary behaviour –embezzlement–. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the high-corruption acceptance’s group. Practical recommendations need to address students’ perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Our ordinary conception of time has it that there are temporal particulars: not only do people do things, but there are particular doings by people; not only are we born, but the birth of each one of us was a particular event, and each of us will have our own particular death. Temporal particulars in this sense are individuated, fundamentally, by their temporal locations or relations, rather than by their intrinsic or qualitative characteristics. In this respect they are unrepeatable, not (...) just de facto, but as a matter of their very nature. However, there is a tradition in philosophy that seriously downplays this aspect of our thinking about time. According to this tradition, the fundamental unit of temporal representation is _tensed truth_; the notion of an unrepeatable particular, individuated by its temporal location, is at best an abstraction from a complex of tensed truths. The aims of this paper are, first, to argue that the representation of temporal particulars is deeply implicated in our ordinary conception of the past as fixed and unalterable; and, secondly, to argue that the theorist of tensed truth is able to provide only a pale imitation of this aspect of our thinking. I will then reflect on the consequences of this for debates about the metaphysics of tense. (shrink)

It is suggested, following a proposal made recently by Smolin, that the most fundamental law of the universe takes this form: Among the set of all possible universes compatible with an irreducibly minimal set of structural constraints, the actually realized universe is the one which maximizes a mathematically well-defined number (the variety) that measures the structural variety of the universe (in the totality of its history). This gives expression to Leibniz's idea that the actual universe gives “the greatest variety possible, (...) but with the greatest possible order.” Two models are proposed in which the idea can be realized and its consequences tested; both are discrete in nature and satisfy highly nonlocal laws. In such a scheme a unique (finite) universe is called into being by the fundamental requirement of maximal variety (for given definition of the variety), which it is conjectured could have such a powerful ordering effect that space, time, the currently known laws of physics, and the observed structure of the universe could all appear as emergent consequences of the single underlying law. (shrink)

In ‘Moral Luck,’ Bernard Williams famously argued that “there is a particularly important species of regret, which I shall call ‘agent-regret,’ which a person can feel only towards his past actions.” Much subsequent commentary has focused on Williams’s claim that agent-regret is not necessarily restricted to voluntary actions, and questioned whether such an attitude could be rationally justified. This focus, however, obscures a more fundamental set of questions raised by Williams’s discussion: what is the role in our moral psychology of (...) evaluative attitudes that relate essentially to past exercises of our agency—occurrences which, by their very nature, cannot be repeated? On a standard conception, regret is directed principally towards actions that resulted from suboptimal deliberation. On this view, the main point of regret is to guide us away from similar poor decisions in the future. But Williams’s key insight in ‘Moral Luck,’ I argue, is that there is a mode of evaluation of one’s past actions and decisions that does not track considerations one could and should have been responsive to at the time, and is for this reason essentially retrospective. From this perspective, the full significance of regret cannot be captured in terms of a disposition to deliberate better in the future. Rather, the particular kind of painful of consciousness of the past embodied in regret amounts to a reflective, and essentially backward-looking, insight into the contingency and finitude of our own agency—that I am a particular person leading a particular life, and that the possibility of leading a different life is now gone forever. I end by making some speculative comments about the intractable question whether it is ultimately good or desirable to be disposed to regret one’s past mistakes. (shrink)

Provides an account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Baggini interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life. He follows Hume on his life's journey, literally walking in the great philosopher's footsteps as Baggini takes readers to the places that inspired Hume the most, from his family estate near the Scottish border to Paris, where, as an older man, he was warmly (...) embraced by French society. Baggini shows how Hume put his philosophy into practice in a life that blended reason and passion, study and leisure, and relaxation and enjoyment. This book includes 145 Humean maxims for living well, on topics ranging from the meaning of success and the value of travel to friendship, facing death, identity, and the importance of leisure. --From publisher description. (shrink)

This article proposes to analyze the idea of organism and other closely related ideas using a combination of semantic fields analysis from conceptual history and the notion of boundary objects from the sociology of scientific knowledge. By tackling a wide range of source material, the article charts the nomadic existence of organism and opens up new vistas for an integrated history of the natural and human sciences. First, the boundaries are less clear-cut between disciplines like biology and sociology than previously (...) believed. Second, a long and transdisciplinary tradition of talking about organismic and societal systems in highly functionalist terms comes into view. Third, the approach shows that conceptions of a world society in Niklas Luhmann's variant are not semantic innovations of the late twentieth century. Rather, their history can be traced back to organicist sociology and its forgotten pioneers, especially Albert Schäffle or Guillaume de Greef, during the last decades of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

In ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’ and Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Pauline Kleingeld argues that, in ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent,’ Kant meant for the Bund of states to be a coercive federation. Kleingeld admits that there is a disparity between this earlier coercive idea of the Bund and Kant’s talk of a voluntary congress in Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals. She explains this disparity by: appealing to a semantic ambiguity (...) in the term ‘Bund’; making claims about with which contemporary 18th century works Kant was acquainted; and ultimately attempting to draw a parallel between the unsocial sociability of individual people within a state and the unsocial sociability of individual states in a larger community of states. In this paper, I argue that while Kleingeld’s claims are superficially supported by the text, her claims depend on her apparent conflating of teleology and morality. (shrink)

This paper describes Wittgenstein's pre-theoretical transcendentalist conception of ethics and the challenge it presents for the kind of global cosmopolitan perspective required of any multinational social responsibility strategy. It is argued that this challenge can be overcome through establishing a sense of solidarity with all stakeholders via a corporate social compact rooted in what Wittgenstein refers to as spontaneous agreement and sympathy. Contemporary examples of successful strategies are provided.

Is it Possible to Experiment with Thought? Ernst Mach’s Notion of Thought Experiment and its Pedagogical Context around 1900. The article tries to establish the crucial importance of the pedagogical dimension of Ernst Mach’s ideas on experimenting with thought. The focus on contemporary pedagogics demonstrates, first, that Mach’s didactic approach to physics is part of a much broader stream of pedagogical writings that transcends national and disciplinary borders and comprises a diversity of authors, e.g. Wilhelm Jerusalem, William James or Alfred (...) N. Whitehead; second, that the much‐heralded controversy between Mach and the French philosopher of science Pierre Duhem about thought experiments does not only revolve around epistemological issues but rather stems from their antagonist vision of teaching physics; and finally, third, that G. Stanley Hall’s psychogenetic theory of pedagogics bears a strong resemblance with the evolutionary naturalism of Machian epistemology and helps explaining key tenets of Mach’s conception of thought experiment. By establishing a broad convergence between the work of all these authors despite their different academic upbringing, background and nationality the article argues for a complex and historically fine‐grained vision of the relations between natural, social and human sciences going beyond dichotomies like ‘Erklären’ and ‘Verstehen’ or the ‘Two Cultures’. (shrink)

El objetivo de este texto es una aproximación teórica de la infancia en las principales concepciones de la filosofía occidental, la nueva historia social de la infancia en el continente y las principales poéticas estéticas del cine latinoamericano durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Para este propósito se analizan las nociones de la infancia desde trabajos con un enfoque histórico-hermenéutico, de análisis crítico de discurso y evaluación de las nociones con base en los aportes de los campos teóricos abordados. (...) Estos cruces permiten pensar los lugares de la infancia como instrumento para lograr un sueño político, las concepciones del tiempo, los derechos liberales de la Ilustración, y el acontecimiento fenomenológico. El fin de esta revisión crítica es un llamado a tejer líneas de fuga de la historia, a recrear mecanismos de resistencia audiovisual que apueste por una estética imperfecta, que desdibuje herencias, que marque procesos sociales en los que la infancia tenga una voz auténtica. Al enfocar la imagen de la infancia resulta crucial que el cine, más allá de mostrar realidades fácticas concretas, tenga un margen de ficción que aprovecha para darnos una poética sentimental de las infancias olvidadas y reinventar la estetización de las nuevas infancias en re-existencias autónomas desde la pluralidad de miradas del continente. (shrink)

We look on Fernán Pérez de Guzmán as an exile not only because he lived out the last thirty years of his life in the relative seclusion of his estate in Batres; he is an exile, too, because as a poet he has long been banished from critical acclaim. For an enthusiastic view, one has to go back to the 1860s and the eulogy of the literary historian José Amador de los Ríos, according to whom Fernán Pérez's graceful didacticism deserved (...) “[el] aprecio de la verdadera crítica.” Since then, “the appreciation of true critics” has been reserved for what is now considered a canonical work of prose history, the Generaciones y semblanzas, whereas most of his poetry has been condemned for stylistic inelegance — ironically, as we shall see, one of the very qualities he seems deliberately to have cultivated. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue in favor of a broad concept of AI that is not restricted to a particular kind of technology. Arguments based on such a concept will stand the test of time and will not become obsolete as technology advances. Arguments concerning the limits and possibilities of technology based solely on steam engine technology, for example, would no longer be relevant today. The same holds for arguments concerning symbolic-logical AI – and will probably be similar in (...) the future with arguments concerning current artificial neural networks. In a second step I develop a technology-independent argument to show that no system – no matter how advanced it may be – can ever fully understand itself. Furthermore, I will show that with a broad concept of AI – which also includes biological systems, for example – AI with human-level capabilities is, at least, possible. However, if artificial intelligence with human-level capabilities is possible, then the fundamental or absolute limitations of AI capabilities would also be fundamental limitations of human capabilities. In other words: what AI can never do, humans can’t do either. (shrink)